The paintings are constructed as organically and irrationally as the landscapes themselves. Within the painting space, the paintings are amok with different gestural styles, as abstract and realistic forms erupt onto the canvas. The paint-handling and the imagery is at times very descriptive of the places I observe, while at other times it is loose, layered, careless and more abstract, hoping to recall the memory of previous uses of the land. The densely painted surfaces and wide-open spaces on the canvas try to convey both a sense of hope and emptiness, a feeling both critical and celebratory of the American landscape.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

friend and fellow artist, brenda howell brought me a HUGE stack of these awesome topographic maps that she acquired by purchasing some flat files from craigslist...you just never know where you're going to find something cool. sorry for so many pics, but i just can't get enough of them!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

l'amour si doux, 20 x 16, dans le jardin, 36x24, rouge magique, 24x20, la petite bisou, 12x12, je danse et je reve, 8x16, cinq papillons, 36x24, toujours ensemble, 28x22, all: acrylic, ink and plaster on canvasi was sent a link to this artist's web site by a fan of the blog and with one look at her work, i knew i must include her sweet paintings in a post...see more here.

Monday, April 27, 2009

here's a great drawing exercise and one that i use in my mark-making workshops...

Make a drawing which consists of a number of elements scattered across the paper. They might be individual objects, or a landscape split into distinct elements, or just marks on the paper. Next, tear up your drawing so that each element is now on its own piece of paper. Now work on the wall or the floor. Allow yourself plenty of room (at least twice as big as you original drawing). Scatter the elements around, and then experiment with changing the composition and with creating new distances between the elements. Turn some of the elements upside down, or rip them in half...Think about new meanings which might be created, and forget your original drawing, think about how the new drawing might be interpreted. As you re-order the elements, begin drawing new elements and shapes in between the old ones to create a new drawing.

My work with bandages came out of my experience as an art therapist. I spontaneously brought bandages into an art therapy session and asked each person to use one in their piece. Intrigued by the results, I began experimenting with bandages in my studio. I found the layering effect of sheer bandages was reflective of the elaborate process of psychological healing and the complexities of human relationships. I am interested in the intricate ways we attempt to insulate ourselves from experiencing psychological pain and shield the story of painful memories we have. When we withhold ourselves, lie to others, are in denial and disassociate we create a veil of defense. These pieces relate to the layers of protection that we build over time to mask our experiences. This series represents the interweaving of our relationships, their complexity, repetition, overlapping, familiarity, wounding, healing, transparency and opacity.

The work I've been doing since the early 1990's involves a specific layering process. They mostly rely on the interaction of the controlled dripped line, maze like linear forms, and organic and geometric forms. The paintings are constructed one layer of forms at a time, starting with layers of drips that have a specific color structure. The forms I use are part of a constantly evolving vocabulary of shapes that began with organic forms I started developing in the early to mid 1980's. At that time I was interested in pre-history, and used forms derived from biology, archeology and natural history. When developing images I still sometimes refer to the biological diagrams and photos I've collected over the years. Now however, they have become simplified, are less illustrative and are more general or ambiguous. The forms have their own developmental process involving genealogy and hybridization. A shape may have a familiar quality, but it remains uncertain whether its origins are organic, or derived from an industrial product. The development and evolution of the paintings are integrally connected to the evolving nature of the forms. I've developed hundreds of templates of varying sizes, for solid shapes as well as for liner forms. Symmetry, asymmetry, anthropomorphic, geometric, biomorphic are some of the categories of forms I use.

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